We are really excited to announce that TRF has unveiled our articles section. It will allow us to explore topics in more depth and give our members another outlet for their talents. Back in June, ysbel suggested that we add this new area to our forum. We approached Andy with the idea, and he has enhanced our forum, along with some of his other forums, with new software to enable us to do so.

The new section is called The Royal Articles, and it can be found here:

We are proud to say that we have some very talented writers among our membership. A few invited articles have been published or are ready to be published, with topics including Princess Diana, Princess Grace, republican alternatives to the British monarchy, and the problems facing commoners who marry into royal families. Articles in the works include some historical articles about French, German, and Spanish royals, an article about royal deaths, a look at some royal homes, and an affectionate tribute to Princess Margaret.

If you are a writer at heart and want to participate in and contribute to this new venture, you can send a private message to any of the admins. Also feel free to contact any of the admins if you have any ideas or suggestions about the articles site. The guidelines for article submission can be found below. We are also planning to add news items in the News section of the articles site, with links back to TRF threads.

Happy Writing!

Ennyllorac

Elspeth

09-02-2007 01:26 AM

Since we know how many members will be wanting to join this venture and write something for us:biggrin:, we have some guidelines to give an idea of the sort of thing we're looking for. Please don't hesitate to contact one of the admins if you have questions, suggestions, or comments, and especially if you're interested in becoming an author.

The forum rules about posting and copyright issues also apply to articles.

The article should be your original work. Material quoted from other sources should be clearly identified as such, and appropriate credit should be given.

Articles should be about royalty-related topics and should have substantive content. We encourage authors to provide references for factual material, and facts and opinions should be clearly differentiated. Articles presenting a biased opinion, as opposed to presenting both sides of an argument, are acceptable as long as the opinion is backed up by published facts. In-depth book and movie reviews are also acceptable; short reviews belong in the relevant threads in the Royal Library.

Articles about topics already covered by previous articles are acceptable as long as they're saying something new, since we would like to avoid having articles repeat each other and we're not planning to remove older ones. If you would like to write about a topic for which articles already exist, please contact one of the administrators to talk about your idea, and we will try to accommodate it.

Finished articles should be in grammatically correct English, with correct spelling and punctuation and all that good stuff. Editorial assistance will be available to help authors with presentation and fact-checking. We encourage non-native English speakers to volunteer as authors if they would like to participate.

Length should be around 1000-5000 words. This is flexible, but we don't want really short articles and we don't have the resources to deal with book manuscripts; we're looking for a happy medium. Series of articles on related subjects are welcome, but each article in the series should be a stand-alone piece of work in its own right. Titles should be concise but informative, and longer articles should be divided into sections with headings that are also concise but informative.

Copyright of the text of the article will remain with the author; by using TRF resources in preparing the article, the author grants permission to TRF to publish the article on our site. After an article has been published, TRF has no obligation to remove it from the site at the author's request.

Copyright of photos remains with the original copyright holders; when we request permission to use their photos in our articles, we're requesting permission to use them at TRF only. If authors subsequently wish to publish their articles elsewhere, they will have to obtain permission from the copyright holders (including other forum members as well as commercial photographers and agencies) to include the photos in their articles.

While we try to publish articles shortly after they have been completed, all the editors are volunteers with real-life obligations, and sometimes there will be delays. Please bear with us if your article is held up, and feel free to contact any of the editors or admins if you have concerns.

If you're interested in writing for us, please contact one of the admins with your idea for a topic and, if possible, a summary of what you intend to write. While we try to accommodate all our prospective authors, we're looking for subject matter and content that are consistent with the overall balance of the forum, and we may occasionally have to refuse or defer articles that don't help us achieve this aim.

No, we aren't planning to pay our authors. You're doing this because you love royalty and the forums so much. ;)

We're looking for suggestions for articles on any royalty-related topic. Even if you don't want to write an article but are interested in reading something on a particular topic, feel free to PM us with your suggestions; ideas are always welcome. If you do want to write an article, that's even better! Please feel free to ask questions in this thread if you're interested in how the articles section will work, and we'll do our best to provide information.

Our main categories at the moment are Biography, History, Monarchy Today, and General Interest. We have plans to add a Life and Lifestyle category and a Reviews category later. We're also thinking of maybe adding a Ceremony and Protocol category if we get enough articles.

We're looking forward to working with our authors to make the articles section of this forum into something really special that we can all be proud of. And many thanks to ysbel for having the idea that started it all and to Andy for making it possible!

Avalon

09-05-2007 02:13 AM

During the short time after the announcement, we have received some very promising suggestions for articles and welcomed a couple of more authors.

If you want to become an author and write about something (royal-connected) you are interested in, why not try? Don't be afraid, it's not too difficult and our Team of Editors is always ready to give a helping hand, when needed. :smile:

Write to any of the Administrators, and we will be happy to discuss your ideas. :flowers:

acdc1

09-05-2007 10:22 PM

This is really silly, but I still don't understand what's going on here. Is it things that we write ourselves, on true topics, fan fiction, or links to other articles?

marezdote

09-05-2007 11:31 PM

This gives our members the opportunity to write factual articles on different aspects of royalty.

RhapsodyBrat

09-05-2007 11:39 PM

^^ From what i understand, the article that will be written here are the sort of articles you can publish in a magazine.They are based on news and actual events, but people's reactions and opinions can be taken into account too. however, the type of articles written for the new venture shouldn't be articles with a thesis (if you get what i mean) or something like an opinion editorial.

if you'll look at it, the articles for the new venture is closer to those written for TRF's Newsletter.

i am actually excited with this new venture! i'm not going to promise a quick contribution (given that research is going to take a lot of time!) but i have a couple of ideas now and i would like to write some articles too.

i'd suggest though to our writers to put in footnotes and/or bibliographies for easy reference and verification of facts.

thanks to our team for putting this new venture up!:flowers:

Elspeth

09-05-2007 11:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by acdc1
(Post 663075)

This is really silly, but I still don't understand what's going on here. Is it things that we write ourselves, on true topics, fan fiction, or links to other articles?

It's things we write ourselves, on true topics. A few of our articles have some imaginary content; one of the articles being worked on at the moment is a biographical article in the form of a letter that the subject might have written to her children, but the content of the letter is largely real. We're not getting into fan fiction, since TRF is a site for factual material about the royals, and the articles will reflect that.

If you look at Ennyllorac's post, you'll get an idea of some of the topics that are being worked on at the moment.

Elspeth

09-05-2007 11:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RhapsodyBrat
(Post 663086)

i am actually excited with this new venture! i'm not going to promise a quick contribution (given that research is going to take a lot of time!) but i have a couple of ideas now and i would like to write some articles too.

i'd suggest though to our writers to put in footnotes and/or bibliographies for easy reference and verification of facts.

thanks to our team for putting this new venture up!:flowers:

You're most welcome, and we look forward to hearing from you! If you'd like to PM one of the editors with your ideas so we can add them to the list of ideas for future articles, it means that if someone has the same idea later, you'll still be given first dibs on writing because you had the idea first.

Depending on the type of article, some of the current ones have footnotes and some don't. For factual articles it's helpful, but for the more light-hearted ones, it's not necessarily mandatory.

ysbel

09-10-2007 11:55 AM

We've already gotten a lot of interesting articles for the venture and I hope this encourages some of you closet writers to show us your stuff.

You'll get a lot of support from the editors and other authors and some pretty nifty tools too.

BeatrixFan

09-10-2007 12:05 PM

As a writer taking part, I can say that the admins and mods are extremely supportive, very helpful and really vital to making this work. And I am unanimous in that.

There are links to the articles site on the portal page, at the top of each forum page, and in several of the moderators' signatures.

Sammy

10-09-2007 05:32 PM

Looking forward to reading them!

Elspeth

10-09-2007 10:21 PM

Feel free to let us know if you'd like to try your hand at writing something.

Iowabelle says you're contributing photos for her article about Diana memorabilia, which is very good of you. We're looking forward to seeing them! I've got a couple of photos of first day covers and a couple of other things which I must dig out for her, because we're getting close to publishing that one.

nyonkaha

05-05-2008 02:25 PM

I would like to know wether poems are welcomed since they may not be up to0 1000 words.

Elspeth

05-06-2008 02:44 AM

No, we're not accepting poems.

Paty

07-07-2008 08:00 AM

I´m not a writer, but I always thought to write about the important role of the Constitutional Monarchies in their own countries. It´s an interestic thing for me. I would like to write about the utility of the monarchies in a Democratic Country. Do you think is a god idea?